New research has found that with the help of food stamps and unemployment insurance, the percentage of Americans who are poor has decreased since the 1960s. Above is a scene from Woonsocket, R.I., where a third of the residents receive nutritional assistance.

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In Woonsocket, R.I., a third of the residents use SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, to pay for groceries. That means the businesses in the struggling town also rely on the program to survive.

Jourie Ortiz gets a hug from his wife, Rebecka, after he was woozy and hardly able to stand after 48 hours with only about five hours of sleep. He works an overnight shift at a supermarket and then comes home to be with his family, getting less than three hours of sleep on many days. They have two children and a combined monthly income of $1,700. They also rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

Government programs such as food stamps and unemployment insurance have made significant progress in easing the plight of the poor in the half-century since the launch of the war on poverty, according to a major new study.

But the nation’s economy has made far less progress lifting people out of poverty without the need for government services.

According to the new research, the safety net helped reduce the percentage of Americans in poverty from 26 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012. The results were especially striking during the most recent economic downturn, when the poverty rate barely budged despite a massive increase in unemployment.

While the government has helped keep poverty at bay, the economy by itself has failed to improve the lives of the very poor over the past 50 years. Without taking into account the role of government policy, more Americans — 29 percent — would be in poverty today, compared with 27 percent in 1967.

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Hidalgo County, Tex., on the border with Mexico, has among the highest obesity rates and the highest poverty rates in the United States. Residents can afford only the cheapest foods, and now those foods are wreaking havoc on their health.

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Hidalgo County, Tex., on the border with Mexico, has among the highest obesity rates and the highest poverty rates in the United States. Residents can afford only the cheapest foods, and now those foods are wreaking havoc on their health.

Luisa Colin, an extension agent for the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program in Hidalgo County, walks near the border fence separating the United States and Mexico. Colin once received food stamps and understands the county’s high levels of poverty. The county has one of the highest obesity rates and poverty rates in the country.Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post

“It gives you a deep appreciation for what public programs do today and how much more they do today than in the past,” said Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “But it also gives you a sense of how little progress we’ve made on incomes and raising incomes in the past several decades and the importance of doing that going forward in order to continue to make progress on poverty.”

Other analysts note that the dramatic expansion of the safety net comes with unintended consequences, including increased dependency for the poor.

Scott Winship, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, said the safety net plays an important and helpful role “during downturns, but then when the economy turns around, the expanded safety net has acted as a poverty trap, in essence lulling people and preventing them from pursuing work.”

The study was led by Christopher Wimer and Liana Fox, researchers at the Columbia Population Research Center, and joined by professors Irwin Garfinkel, Neeraj Kaushal and Jane Waldfogel. They made use of a change in how the U.S. government began measuring poverty in 2010.

Until then, the U.S. Census evaluated poverty based only on a limited measure of the income and expenses of Americans. From 1967 through 2012, the official measure showed poverty increasing from 14 percent of the population to 15 percent, often falling during periods of economic strength and rising during weakness.

But starting three years ago, the government began publishing an alternative measure that took into account the full range of expenses the poor face and the government benefits they receive. The Columbia researchers went further, using that standard and tracing it back in time to evaluate the evolution of poverty since the Johnson era.

Among the researchers’ discoveries was that deep poverty — incomes below 50 percent of the poverty line — has been stable at 5 percent of the population for about 40 years and that the safety net has grown especially powerful in protecting children from poverty.

“That means the safety net is working effectively for the most vulnerable families and kids,” Waldfogel said.

One of the most striking findings for the researchers was how poverty stayed stable during the financial crisis and Great Recession thanks to a dramatic expansion of the safety net, including enhanced unemployment benefits, more-generous food stamps and tax credits for the poor.

In previous and shallower recessions, poverty increased more than it did during the 2007-to-2009 downturn. For example, as the economy slowed and fell into recession in 1990, the poverty rate, including the impact of the safety net, rose 1.5 percentage points to 20.7 percent.

By contrast, in the far worse recent recession, with a much higher level of unemployment, the poverty rate rose only 0.8 percentage points.

“It’s sort of remarkable,” Wimer said. Without the safety net, “poverty would have risen by five or six percentage points from 2007 through 2012.”

More recently, in the slow-going economic recovery, this alternative poverty rate has climbed a bit more, to 16 percent — a reflection, researchers say, of the fact that Americans are losing benefits as they return to work, a positive outcome that still involves costs such as transportation.

Armed with this type of evidence, White House officials say they will work aggressively to try to protect existing safety-net programs at the same time they seek to lift the wages of people in need, for example by fighting for an increase in the minimum wage.

“We have to defend nutritional assistance and unemployment insurance that made that progress on reducing poverty possible, but we also have to address the reasons that poverty hasn’t improved in market incomes,” Furman said. “When you cut the wages for low-income people, adjusted for inflation, you’re not going to make as much progress on reducing poverty for low-income Americans.”

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